“A guy,” Beth quips back, not backing down from Peyton’s inquiry.
“Oh,” Peyton answers, looking down into her coffee mug.
I’m pretty sure I’m starting to piece together what is happening in front of me. I might as well find out. “Were you out with Jay?” Instead of looking at Beth while I’m speaking to her, I watch Peyton. The second his name comes out of my mouth, her entire body goes rigid. Touchdown.
“No way, Jose. If you ain’t spillin’ the goods on your man, I’m certainly not spillin’ the goods on mine.” Beth cocks an eyebrow at me. She knows she’s won before I even open my mouth.
“I’m going to shower,” I say, putting my mug in the sink. This is shaping up to be the third weird day in a row.
I make my way down the hall to the bathroom, shutting the door behind me. We don’t usually lock it when it’s just the girls at home because there is only one bathroom in the entire house. And when you gotta go, you gotta go. I turn on the shower, peeling off my pajamas before stepping underneath the hot spray. Standing there for a few minutes, I let the water beat down over my muscles.
My brain has been working nonstop for the past two days since New Year’s Eve, and it’s starting to wear on me. We’ve only had one date—non-date…hangout…whatever—together and he is already way too close. I’ve spent twelve years keeping the opposite sex at a careful arm’s length from my heart, but Jamison Henley seems to have sneaked his way in when I wasn’t looking, and now, he won’t leave.
“He’s Jami freaking Henely. I’m not sure he’s genetically capable of doing ‘fine.’” Beth’s words are playing in a loop in my head. She’s right. He’s Jami freaking Henley, and he never keeps a woman around for longer than it takes him to make one of his guitars. I’ve seen him trade girls out for a new model every couple of months for as long as I’ve known him. So what in the name of god is a girl like me, a girl with the kind of heart that breaks, doing dancing with that disaster? I have no fucking clue.
I’ve been in the shower awhile by the time I finish sorting my thoughts—or trying to anyway—and shampooing my hair. I’m bloody exhausted from the war of emotions battling in my head and in my heart. All I want to do is take advantage of one of my last two days off, before I have to sink back into reality. I step into the bathroom, wrapping one towel around on my head and another around my chest. I take time rubbing my favorite vanilla body cream over my skin and brushing my teeth before I open the door to head back to my room.
I’m halfway down the hall when I hear people laughing in the living room. Greyson and Hannah must have stopped by. My bedroom is the closest to the end of the hall, and I duck in quickly. The last thing I need is to flash Greyson in my birthday suit.
After shutting the door behind me, I reach for the knot in my towel and start to spin around so I can look for some clothes. I’m plotting what outfit is clean when I turn fully around and scream bloody murder. I scare easy. So what?
“Son of a bitch!” I curse, clutching my heart on the outside of my chest.
“I’d hardly say it’s fair for you to call my mother a bitch. You don’t even know her,” Jami teases from his perch on the edge of my bed.
“What the fuck are you doing in here?” I screech, making a somewhat feeble attempt to cover myself up.
“I called, but you didn’t answer. So I came over,” He answers, not so subtly letting his eyes roam
“That seems a little stalkerish, don’t you think?” I bristle, turning my back to him as I search for some clothes to put on. I’m pretty ticked off. I’m not sure what angle he’s running right now, if he’s just looking for a rebound lay or what, but I’m not going to be that girl. I can’t afford to be that girl.
It was hard enough walking away from him after the intimate night we spent together months ago. And I’m not going to be able to do it again. So why the fuck is he pushing so hard all of a sudden? It’s not exactly like he came chasing after me when I said that it was a one-time thing. No. He moved on to the next bimbo that had fallen off the skank tree and hit every branch on the way down. Fucking typical.
“We’re all going to see the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie,” he says from behind me, clearly not noticing the extra bitch my tone was laced with.
“Well I’m not,” I snark shortly in reply, locating a pair of yoga pants on floor. It’s not exactly that I’m a messy person. I’m just not really a clean person either. I prefer a sort of organized chaos if you will.